Exhibition: Reflections

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About the exhibition
 

Scientific analysis helps us to determine the age, mode of creation, authenticity or condition of works of art; the artistic sphere has long been inspired by scientific ideas for change, and examples of this reflection can be found from Leonardo da Vinci and his predecessors to M.C. Escher and contemporary artists. Reflections present this fascinating mutual reflection through examples of paintings and mosaics by leading contemporary Czech and Polish artists who have kindly lent their works to the Academy of Fine Arts of the Czech Republic for the duration of the exhibition (22 October to 11 November 2024) and have created new works inspired by scientific analyses of the original mosaics and paintings. At the exhibition you will be able to see not only this chain of inspiration, but also samples of the exhibited works under the microscope.

The exhibition is co-organised by Pavla Bauerová (FZU and ITAM of the CAS; also the artistic-scientific curator of the exhibition) and Julie Nekola Nováková (FZU of the CAS). The creation of the exhibition was supported by the MAP program of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

The opening ceremony of the exhibition took place on Tuesday 22 October 2024 in the presence of guests from various institutes of the CAS and from the wider scientific and artistic sphere. The painting will be open to the general public from Thursday, 7 November to Saturday, 9 November 2024 during the Open Days at the Faculty of Physical Sciences. If you are interested in a school, nursery or other group tour in the meantime, please contact pr [at] fzu [dot] cz.
 

Exhibiting artists
 

Łukasz Huculak is a leading Polish painter, curator and author of texts on art. His current interests include curiosities, kunstkammer, roots and cosmos. His paintings recall relics of ancient cultures, archaeological finds or museum destructions. He has completed artist residencies in the USA, Paris, Palermo, Munich, Konigshein Castle, Fulda and Borobudur. He is also a member of the Warsaw Association of Art Historians, the Lower Silesian Association for the Promotion of Fine Arts, the Academy of Young Scientists and Artists and the editorial board of the Silesian Yearbooks of Art. He cooperates with the art-scientific journal of the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź "Powidoki". He runs the painting studio at the E. Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław.
 

Sylwia Svorová Pawelkowicz is a researcher, painter, curator, art restorer - she lives between art and science. She studies art materials and specializes in pigment identification using optical and electron microscopy. In 2016, she discovered a rare yellow pigment - vanadinite Pb5(VO4)3Cl - used in the decoration of a church in Chotkow (now Poland). Since then, she has been experimenting with another vanadium-based pigment - bismuth vanadate, BiVO4, newly marketed as a replacement for cadmium and lead-chromate yellows. She lives and paints in Prague and Warsaw; since 2022 she works at the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the CAS; since October 2024 she is a PhD student at the Faculty of Chemistry, University of Warsaw.
 

Magdalena Kracík Štorkánová is engaged in mosaic art: creation, restoration, design, promotion and teaching. She began her systematic museological journey in 2000 during her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, followed by studies at the academies in Carrara and doctoral studies at the academies in Prague, Vienna and OPD in Florence. Since then she has participated in many projects, exhibitions and conferences. She is also the author of several monographs. In 2012, she founded the Art and Craft Mosaics z.s., an organization that brings together artists, restorers, historians, scholars and mosaic enthusiasts. The main goal is to save endangered mosaic works in the Czech Republic and to spread awareness of mosaic as an artistic discipline, its history and technique.
 

Zdeněk Dudek graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 1966. In 1968 he created two important mosaic sculptures - one in front of the Alessandria Hotel in Hradec Králové, the other at the Skalní Město Hotel in Prachovské skály. Shortly afterwards, his protest against the Soviet occupation resulted in his leaving the Czechoslovak Union of Visual Artists. After returning to art, he exhibited in many Czech and foreign galleries. In 1991 he organized a large exhibition of fifty paintings at Stanford University in California. He is actively involved in several art associations, including the Lughnasadh Association and Art&Craft Mozaika, z.s. He is also a member of Bastion 4, where he regularly exhibits his sculptures and paintings.


Scientific results
 

The author of the scientific analyses of the presented works of art is Pavla Bauerová, curator of the exhibition and researcher at the FZU and ITAM of the CAS, where she focuses on the analysis of historical monuments and art.

Images of the microstructure of samples taken from paintings or mosaics often resemble works of art in their own right. However, the main purpose of material analysis of paintings or mosaics is not, of course, to discover the novel spatial or aesthetic dimensions of a given work, but to find out what materials were used and how the work was created. Microscopes are excellent for looking under the painter's brush or the mosaic artist's hammer - either the familiar light microscope from school, where we observe the sample using light, or the scanning electron microscope, where electrons provide information about the sample. Thanks to the electrons, we can zoom in on the sample up to 200 times better with a scanning electron microscope than with a light microscope, and we can also find out what chemical elements make up the work or object we are studying.

Microscopy is far from being the only tool in the search for the material composition of paintings, mosaics or historical or archaeological artefacts. Other analytical methods should also be used to provide comprehensive information on their composition. Nevertheless, microscopy in particular is usually never omitted in the study of these works, as it provides a basic picture of their composition.

Samples the size of a pinhead (paintings) or a bean seed (mosaics) were taken from the works of our artists. We embedded them in resin and sanded them down so that we could see all the layers of the painting or mosaic on the section of the sketch. The specimens prepared in this way were observed first in a light microscope (from Olympus) and then in a scanning electron microscope (Mira from the original Czech company Tescan).
 

Łukasz Huculak - TERRAFORMA
A3 sample
Under the microscope, the A3 sample taken from Łukasz's image appears as a rather complex layer consisting of at least six coloured layers (Figs. 1 and 2). The chemical composition of the sample was determined at ten different locations, resulting in Table 1 showing the percentages (wt%) of each chemical element converted to the corresponding oxides. The distribution maps of the elements in the sample (elemental maps - Figs. 3, 4, 6) also illustrate the distribution of the elements in the sample.
The results show that in the white parts of the colour layer Łukasz used mainly titanium white TiO2 and chalk CaCO3, while the blue part of the colour layer was painted mainly with ultramarine - a silicate containing sodium and sulphur (Na8-10Al6Si6O24S2-4). The ultramarine was mixed with other pigments - different types of white paint were used to lighten it - besides TiO2, zinc (ZnO) and barite (BaSO4) white. The painter achieved darker shades by adding iron and manganese pigments. 
 

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Sylwia Svorová Pawełkowicz - ŽIVLY
sample SS-1
Sylwia's image also consists of multiple sub-colour layers (Fig. 7) - five could be distinguished in the light microscope (Fig. 8). The bottommost layer is a mixture of titanium white (TiO2) and chalk (CaCO3) - Fig. 10. The most interesting pigment was identified in the next layer - the V and Bi elements reveal that bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) is present, giving the layer a bright yellow colour (Figs. 11-12). A very thin layer of iron pigment also lies above the bismuth vanadate layer (Fig. 13) (Fig. 14). Although the following colored layers are blue and red, respectively (Fig. 8), in the electron microscope both layers appear to consist of titanium white only. Thus, their coloration is most likely due to organic dyes mixed with the titanium white. However, organic compounds cannot be detected by the scanning electron microscope, and therefore some additional methods - such as infrared spectroscopy - would be necessary to describe these layers more precisely.
 

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Magdalena Kracík Štorkánová - GOLDEN CAGE from triptych Headless Women
Magdalena has decorated the mannequin with various golden mosaics. We decided to analyse a ceramic tessera (mosaic cube) with a golden (more precisely, golden coloured) surface (Fig. 15). As we can see from Fig. 16, which is a cross section of a ceramic tessera, the cube consists of two distinctly different colored parts (layers). The differences between the two layers shine through better when viewed in a scanning electron microscope. There we see a distinctly sintered microstructure of the tessera 'body' and above it an approximately 100 - 200 µm thick layer of different chemical composition (Fig. 15-16). This is significantly enriched in calcium compared to the tessera body, whereas aluminium is predominant in the tessera body. In addition, the surface layer of tessera contains increased amounts of potassium and zircon (Fig. 17-18). As can be seen from the chemical composition results (Table 3), we would look in vain for true gold in the tessera.

 

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Zdeněk Dudek - SHINING OBJECTS
Zdenek Dudek's mosaic luminous objects consist of a concrete body on which is applied a mosaic made up of different coloured pebble stones (layer 2) and slides. These are set into the concrete core (layer 3) and the gaps between them are grouted with beige grout (layer 1). The material sample was not taken directly from the original, but from a preparatory model for one of the objects.
The fine-grained grout (layer 1, Figs. 18-21) contains white cement (which appears to be tinted with some beige pigment; however, the presence of this pigment has not been conclusively established). In addition, limestone and dolomitic flour is added to the mix as a fine aggregate; silicates are present to a negligible degree. The analysed pebble acting as a mosaic tessera ('cube') is dolomite CaCO3.MgCO3 (layer 2). The author has embedded the dolomite pebble in a concrete body consisting of sand aggregate, in which quartz is the main component, and Portland cement (layer 3). The white cement and Portland cement differ from each other in the composition of the main cement component, clinker. While the clinker of conventional Portland cement contains iron in addition to calcium, silicon and aluminium, the clinker of white cement lacks iron in order to preserve the white colour of the cement. The difference between the two types of clinker can best be seen from the comparison in Table 3 and partly from Figures 22-25.
 

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